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Nowadays when someone claims to be "serverless", there can be two interpretations: 1. It's a server actually. It's just that the server serves up functions, wi

Nowadays when someone claims to be "serverless", there can be two interpretations: 1. It's a server actually. It's just that the server serves up functions, without state. So a more correct terminology would be "stateless servers" 2. Truly P2P (Like blockchain), therefore there truly are no "servers". Used to think Amazon did a great job coming up with the jargon that's great for marketing, but lately as we see more and more option 2s which are TRULY "serverless", the option 1s increasingly sound like imposters. After all in option 1, there ARE servers. To be able to claim you're "serverless", you really shouldn't have servers.

MrFurious 9y ago
I think that the best name is "server for dummies".
- cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
  As far as I know, all the projects that promote themselves as "serverless" are stateless functions and not designed to store states, which means if you want a database you will need to store it elsewhere and utilize it from the "serverless" container. So no DB for you out of the box if you want to use serverless architecture. So I don't think it's for "dummies". Dummies want an all-in-one server.
  - CharlesW 9y ago
    > As far as I know, all the projects that promote themselves as "serverless" are stateless functions… Any normal PHP app is just a collection of stateless functions, but that doesn't automatically make all PHP apps "serverless" apps. What makes something "serverless" is the FaaS[1] execution model. [1] https://martinfowler.com/articles/serverless.html https://martinfowler.com/articles/serverless.html
    - cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
      Most PHP apps are run by DBs. They are not stateless.
      - bri3d 9y ago
        Most "FaaS" apps also access a remote datastore as well. The fundamental value of most web software applications revolves around state transformation in some way or another. FaaS just "cleans up" the application state insofar as it forces the state boundary to a comparatively slow edge and doesn't let you, for example, store things in in-memory shared datastores.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - khanan 9y ago
      Or, you know, it's better to reference the source: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-robinson-www-interface-00 https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-robinson-www-interface-00
  - dastbe 9y ago
    in the past year or so i've seen serverless extended to anything where the underlying compute is abstracted away. so ex. bigquery and dynamodb, two very stateful services, are also described as serverless.
CharlesW 9y ago
Like "cloud computing", the name "serverless" doesn't make much sense when used literally. It doesn't mean that there are no servers involved, just that there are none to be directly managed by the developer. P2P also doesn't mean "no servers", but that every node is as much server as client. Amazon popularized but didn't invent the term "serverless", which appears to have been first used in 2012.[1] [1] http://readwrite.com/2012/10/15/why-the-future-of-software-and-apps-is-serverless/ http://readwrite.com/2012/10/15/why-the-future-of-software-a...
- losteric 9y ago
  Functions-as-a-service seems clearer to me
  - CharlesW 9y ago
    Me too! It also works nicely when thinking about the IaaS ⟷ PaaS ⟷ FaaS continuum of abstraction.
    - dannyw 9y ago
      Eventually we'll get to LaaS, where instead of having to find, test, and integrate libraries, you type in some natural language like "send an email", and pop down a guaranteed-compatible-for-X-years, 100% uptime, edge-case-handled function that automatically bills per execution directly to your FaaS account, no registration or invoicing required.
- _hyn3 9y ago
  > It doesn't mean that there are no servers involved, just that there are none to be directly managed by the developer. They already had stuff like that. S3. RDS. Elasticache. At least the cloud gives you the nebulous feeling of servers off in the ether somewhere. But serverless is neither specific nor accurate. It doesn't work. It's nothing more than lazy marketing-speak.
  - Proven 9y ago
IgorPartola 9y ago
I haven’t seen option 2 things referred to as serverless. Their descriptions often involve the word blockchain from what I gather. Seeverless is a catchy name, and a better one perhaps would have been function oriented or function service or some such. But it really does mean swrverless in that (a) there isn’t one server and (b) there is zero configuration and maintenance of the server for you to perform.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
  > I haven’t seen option 2 things referred to as serverless. People use "blockchain" to describe it to other non-technical people, but they do need a way to describe their architecture. Among blockchain/crypto developers the word "blockchain" has become washed down too much that it really doesn't mean anything. So when they need to explain their architecture they do need a way to describe how their app doesn't have a server. What I've seen is people say "my app is 'TRULY' serverless", or "My app does not require a centralized server". This was actually my point, because it looks like people who are actually building truly "serverless" apps find themselves in a situation where the word has been hijacked by server vendors, so they have to use qualifiers like "truly", or explain it out in more detail to actually express that they indeed don't have a server. Not saying all the FaaS guys don't have a point, just saying it's kind of a funny situation not so different from when "hoverboard" was viral a few years ago. Everyone knew it didn't "hover" but it was too late because the brand was already taken. > But it really does mean swrverless in that (a) there isn’t one server Normally when you say "X-less", it means "there is NO X", not "there are more than one X".
  - IgorPartola 9y ago
    Would you say that if you use Zipcar and don’t own your own vehicle, you live a carless lifestyle? And are you saying that people in the crypto world have blockchain as such an implicit given that they don’t need to describe it, but a distributed nature of its operation is something that explicitly needs to be stated every time? That seems really silly. “As a public ledger” is better than serverless in that case. Or “smart contracts”. But serverless really is a misnomer buzzword in that case.
sriku 9y ago
They actually mean this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface. 1993 is the new 2018. edit: And the life of the Apache Web Server (the first AWS) started with that interface.
- taneq 9y ago
  Clearly the next big development in this space will be some form of server-side scripting language which can be embedded in HTML and is tightly coupled with the web server, some sort of Hypertext Preprocessor.
  - bdcravens 9y ago
    I bet if AWS acquired ColdFusion from Adobe and rebranded it Elastic Markup Platform it'd be the hot new thing
- robertcope 9y ago
  I was just telling my wife this morning that this "Serverless" business was just CGI reinvented. I don't get it.
  - tinymollusk 9y ago
    I remember CGI; curious if you're able to elaborate how you see the analogy.
    - bri3d 9y ago
      Pure CGI applications (before the mod_x / long-running workers strategy took over) are "stateless" / "function as a service" insofar as the application's internal state can only live for one request lifecycle. However, they generally ran with the external state (ex. local filesystem) preserved between requests, so the approach was still often a bit different than it is for modern FaaS applications, where state can only live off-server (ex. in a remote datastore or another service).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
intjk 9y ago
I just interpret 'serverless' to mean 'an abstraction layer above the server'. The term is poorly named, but just like git commands you gotta go with what takes off. shrug unicode
Gogogogirl 9y ago
I thought there were nodes in blockchain.
oh-kumudo 9y ago
Serverless means you don't have to explicit manage hosts yourself. They are transparent to you. In that case Lambda is no different from blockchain, where you have either AWS/server farm to run the actual code for you. Which in term, makes this project weird. Because in order to use it, you still needs to hosts a group of servers yourself. If someones else hosts it for you, you don't really care what framework they are using.
- dingaling 9y ago
  > Serverless means you don't have to explicit manage hosts yourself So they say but it still sounds daft. I have a ticket to fly from London to NYC but all I have to do is turn-up and sit in a seat, someone else manages the imfrastructure. Aeroplaneless architecture!

MrFurious 9y ago

I think that the best name is "server for dummies".

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
As far as I know, all the projects that promote themselves as "serverless" are stateless functions and not designed to store states, which means if you want a database you will need to store it elsewhere and utilize it from the "serverless" container. So no DB for you out of the box if you want to use serverless architecture. So I don't think it's for "dummies". Dummies want an all-in-one server.
- CharlesW 9y ago
  > As far as I know, all the projects that promote themselves as "serverless" are stateless functions… Any normal PHP app is just a collection of stateless functions, but that doesn't automatically make all PHP apps "serverless" apps. What makes something "serverless" is the FaaS[1] execution model. [1] https://martinfowler.com/articles/serverless.html https://martinfowler.com/articles/serverless.html
  - cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
    Most PHP apps are run by DBs. They are not stateless.
    - bri3d 9y ago
      Most "FaaS" apps also access a remote datastore as well. The fundamental value of most web software applications revolves around state transformation in some way or another. FaaS just "cleans up" the application state insofar as it forces the state boundary to a comparatively slow edge and doesn't let you, for example, store things in in-memory shared datastores.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - khanan 9y ago
    Or, you know, it's better to reference the source: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-robinson-www-interface-00 https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-robinson-www-interface-00
- dastbe 9y ago
  in the past year or so i've seen serverless extended to anything where the underlying compute is abstracted away. so ex. bigquery and dynamodb, two very stateful services, are also described as serverless.

CharlesW 9y ago

Like "cloud computing", the name "serverless" doesn't make much sense when used literally. It doesn't mean that there are no servers involved, just that there are none to be directly managed by the developer. P2P also doesn't mean "no servers", but that every node is as much server as client. Amazon popularized but didn't invent the term "serverless", which appears to have been first used in 2012.[1] [1] http://readwrite.com/2012/10/15/why-the-future-of-software-and-apps-is-serverless/ http://readwrite.com/2012/10/15/why-the-future-of-software-a...

losteric 9y ago
Functions-as-a-service seems clearer to me
- CharlesW 9y ago
  Me too! It also works nicely when thinking about the IaaS ⟷ PaaS ⟷ FaaS continuum of abstraction.
  - dannyw 9y ago
    Eventually we'll get to LaaS, where instead of having to find, test, and integrate libraries, you type in some natural language like "send an email", and pop down a guaranteed-compatible-for-X-years, 100% uptime, edge-case-handled function that automatically bills per execution directly to your FaaS account, no registration or invoicing required.
_hyn3 9y ago
> It doesn't mean that there are no servers involved, just that there are none to be directly managed by the developer. They already had stuff like that. S3. RDS. Elasticache. At least the cloud gives you the nebulous feeling of servers off in the ether somewhere. But serverless is neither specific nor accurate. It doesn't work. It's nothing more than lazy marketing-speak.
- Proven 9y ago

IgorPartola 9y ago

I haven’t seen option 2 things referred to as serverless. Their descriptions often involve the word blockchain from what I gather. Seeverless is a catchy name, and a better one perhaps would have been function oriented or function service or some such. But it really does mean swrverless in that (a) there isn’t one server and (b) there is zero configuration and maintenance of the server for you to perform.

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
> I haven’t seen option 2 things referred to as serverless. People use "blockchain" to describe it to other non-technical people, but they do need a way to describe their architecture. Among blockchain/crypto developers the word "blockchain" has become washed down too much that it really doesn't mean anything. So when they need to explain their architecture they do need a way to describe how their app doesn't have a server. What I've seen is people say "my app is 'TRULY' serverless", or "My app does not require a centralized server". This was actually my point, because it looks like people who are actually building truly "serverless" apps find themselves in a situation where the word has been hijacked by server vendors, so they have to use qualifiers like "truly", or explain it out in more detail to actually express that they indeed don't have a server. Not saying all the FaaS guys don't have a point, just saying it's kind of a funny situation not so different from when "hoverboard" was viral a few years ago. Everyone knew it didn't "hover" but it was too late because the brand was already taken. > But it really does mean swrverless in that (a) there isn’t one server Normally when you say "X-less", it means "there is NO X", not "there are more than one X".
- IgorPartola 9y ago
  Would you say that if you use Zipcar and don’t own your own vehicle, you live a carless lifestyle? And are you saying that people in the crypto world have blockchain as such an implicit given that they don’t need to describe it, but a distributed nature of its operation is something that explicitly needs to be stated every time? That seems really silly. “As a public ledger” is better than serverless in that case. Or “smart contracts”. But serverless really is a misnomer buzzword in that case.

sriku 9y ago

They actually mean this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface. 1993 is the new 2018. edit: And the life of the Apache Web Server (the first AWS) started with that interface.

taneq 9y ago
Clearly the next big development in this space will be some form of server-side scripting language which can be embedded in HTML and is tightly coupled with the web server, some sort of Hypertext Preprocessor.
- bdcravens 9y ago
  I bet if AWS acquired ColdFusion from Adobe and rebranded it Elastic Markup Platform it'd be the hot new thing
robertcope 9y ago
I was just telling my wife this morning that this "Serverless" business was just CGI reinvented. I don't get it.
- tinymollusk 9y ago
  I remember CGI; curious if you're able to elaborate how you see the analogy.
  - bri3d 9y ago
    Pure CGI applications (before the mod_x / long-running workers strategy took over) are "stateless" / "function as a service" insofar as the application's internal state can only live for one request lifecycle. However, they generally ran with the external state (ex. local filesystem) preserved between requests, so the approach was still often a bit different than it is for modern FaaS applications, where state can only live off-server (ex. in a remote datastore or another service).

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

intjk 9y ago

I just interpret 'serverless' to mean 'an abstraction layer above the server'. The term is poorly named, but just like git commands you gotta go with what takes off. shrug unicode

Gogogogirl 9y ago

I thought there were nodes in blockchain.

oh-kumudo 9y ago

Serverless means you don't have to explicit manage hosts yourself. They are transparent to you. In that case Lambda is no different from blockchain, where you have either AWS/server farm to run the actual code for you. Which in term, makes this project weird. Because in order to use it, you still needs to hosts a group of servers yourself. If someones else hosts it for you, you don't really care what framework they are using.

dingaling 9y ago
> Serverless means you don't have to explicit manage hosts yourself So they say but it still sounds daft. I have a ticket to fly from London to NYC but all I have to do is turn-up and sit in a seat, someone else manages the imfrastructure. Aeroplaneless architecture!